PLOT: Seven years after the death of his wife, Shigeharu Aoyama decides it is time to marry again, but he has no idea how to meet an appropriate mate. His movie producer friend comes up with a plan: they will hold a fake audition for a movie role where the widower can secretly interview dozens of women. Aoyama becomes smitten with shy, mysterious Asami and asks her out; but when she disappears just as things start to heat up between them, he goes on a quest to find her, only to discover that his ideal love may not be the innocent creature she seems.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Poster and cover images always feature Asami holding a syringe, a moment that hints at bad things to come. But the weirder images that sticks in my mind are the shots of the mysterious beauty sitting in her apartment, head down, hair covering her face, telephone within arm’s reach. The implication is that she has been sitting there, motionless, in a trance for the entire time she has been offscreen, just waiting for Aoyama’s call. Also, she has something lying in the background. Something wrapped in a burlap bag…

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Takashi Miike’s most accomplished film, Audition initially shocks because of how normal it seems, before the director slyly pulls the rug from under our feet and launches us headfirst into a nightmare of pain. Fortunately, a perfectly positioned 13-minute hallucination sequence gives this movie the surreal hook (meathook, as it were) needed to elevate this master of the perverse’s best-made movie onto the list of the weirdest movies ever made.

PLOT: Mutant serial killers known as “Engineers,” who sprout spontaneous bioweapons when wounded, are terrorizing Tokyo. Ruka, a sword-wielding loner addicted to cutting herself, is the star officer of the privatized Tokyo Police Corporation and the best Engineer-hunter on the force. As she investigates the Key Man, the human monster who is creating the Engineers, Ruka finds that secrets buried in her past may influence the future direction of her police career…

BACKGROUND:

Although he made short films as early as 1995, Yoshihiro Nishimura made a living early in his career supervising gory special effects and makeup for movies like Rubber’s Lover (1996), Suicide Club (2001), and Meatball Machine (2005).

Tokyo Gore Police was a huge success, and following right on the heels of 2008’s The Machine Girl (for which Nishimura did the effects), it helped popularize the modern Japanese splatterpunk movement.

The character of the Key Man had shown up in Nishimura’s 55-minute 1995 experimental film Anatomia Extinction.

Nishimura cites the paintings of Salvador Dali as a key influence on his design style.

Tokyo Gore Police was co-produced by Nikkatsu, the studio infamous for firing auteur Seijun Suzuki in the 1960s because his films were too weird.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: Though many people may be stuck on the genitalia-related mutations (penis cannon, crocodile maw vagina), I believe the quadruple amputee gimp dog lady (whose missing limbs can be fitted with blades or automatic weapons) is the movie’s most bizarre creation. Because her existence is casually revealed without comment or explanation, as a natural part of Tokyo Gore Police‘s unnatural world, in many ways it’s also the most perverse element.

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: Tokyo Gore Police earns its spot on the List as the apex of an entire genre of movies: the gory Japanese biohorror B-movie built around absurd violence and crazy mutant creatures. With its bordello of freaks, fountains of blood spurting from decapitated heads, and sick jokes at the expense of our fragile human anatomy, Tokyo Gore Police ticks off all the splatterpunk boxes; heck, it helped draw the boxes. Tokyo Gore Police found the top and easily vaulted over it, and try as they might no one has been able to raise the bad-taste bar—yet. As a bonus, this movie provides something you don’t see in its sillier imitators: a layer of nihilistic social satire and a nightmarish sense of urban despair.

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